Elder Soutas' 21st Birthday! *******************************************************************
The last couple of days quite a bit has happened.
For one, we had Brent's baptism scheduled and all ready to go yesterday---or so we thought. So it turns out that the baptismal clothing that Brent originally said DID fit turned out to not actually fit him when he tried it on. So we scrambled along with our ward mission leader and branch president to find some clothing that could work but to no avail. We had to reschedule the baptism to 2 weeks from now. I felt a little sad that it turned out this way, but oddly, i felt it might have been necessary and answer to prayer. Though Brent passed his interview of worthiness for baptism, I still felt for some reason that the timing wasn't quite right. So I think the Lord may have intervened. Elder Kama was a little upset at himself becasue he felt like he ignored a prompting to tell Brent to try the baptismal clothing on. I told him that there is a reason for this all and not to get too upset at himself.
in other news, our investigator Julia currently has a baptismal date set for 27 of November! She has great support from her family members as we had a great dinner and lesson with her and her fiance at The Rigdon's home. The main obstacle for them right now is they need to separate. What is good is that they moved their wedding date to Dec 10, but now that they know the baptism is nov 27 that will allow them opportunity to make the choice to live the law of chastity even before their marriage which I think would be best of course before their baptism. Julia is a very choice investigator though and time will tell.
on exchanges, Elder Durrant and I offered to clean up someone who got TPd on their tree. IT was really fun! probably one of the best service things I've done on my mission. I'll send a pic of elder durrant. he hasn't sent the one of me yet. we had to use long stikcs to get the ones high in the branches. Service is the best medicine.
Our goals for this week:
we really want to focus on the fundamentals in the 12 week book. It is so easy to get away from those. I personally think every missionary should use the 12 week book for their studies. 3 months is not enough to master those principles and teaching techniques. I think it would improve our mission a lot if we all did that.
we also really are hoping to gain better trust with the members. The baptism haveing to be rescheduled sure didn't help with that, but we want to try to have more member visits and invite them to participate in the work of salvation. To do this, we are thinking of sharing the 3-5 min resto with them and having them study and teach it to us in a follow up visit. Also we have thought of calling certain family members "on a mission." There is an awesome story that I read from an ensign article of how a small branch was built into a huge ward because they had "proselyting families." Certain families would go out and find other families to invite to activities and love them into the church. All of this is easier said than done, but we will give it a shot!
For one, we had Brent's baptism scheduled and all ready to go yesterday---or so we thought. So it turns out that the baptismal clothing that Brent originally said DID fit turned out to not actually fit him when he tried it on. So we scrambled along with our ward mission leader and branch president to find some clothing that could work but to no avail. We had to reschedule the baptism to 2 weeks from now. I felt a little sad that it turned out this way, but oddly, i felt it might have been necessary and answer to prayer. Though Brent passed his interview of worthiness for baptism, I still felt for some reason that the timing wasn't quite right. So I think the Lord may have intervened. Elder Kama was a little upset at himself becasue he felt like he ignored a prompting to tell Brent to try the baptismal clothing on. I told him that there is a reason for this all and not to get too upset at himself.
in other news, our investigator Julia currently has a baptismal date set for 27 of November! She has great support from her family members as we had a great dinner and lesson with her and her fiance at The Rigdon's home. The main obstacle for them right now is they need to separate. What is good is that they moved their wedding date to Dec 10, but now that they know the baptism is nov 27 that will allow them opportunity to make the choice to live the law of chastity even before their marriage which I think would be best of course before their baptism. Julia is a very choice investigator though and time will tell.
on exchanges, Elder Durrant and I offered to clean up someone who got TPd on their tree. IT was really fun! probably one of the best service things I've done on my mission. I'll send a pic of elder durrant. he hasn't sent the one of me yet. we had to use long stikcs to get the ones high in the branches. Service is the best medicine.
Our goals for this week:
we really want to focus on the fundamentals in the 12 week book. It is so easy to get away from those. I personally think every missionary should use the 12 week book for their studies. 3 months is not enough to master those principles and teaching techniques. I think it would improve our mission a lot if we all did that.
we also really are hoping to gain better trust with the members. The baptism haveing to be rescheduled sure didn't help with that, but we want to try to have more member visits and invite them to participate in the work of salvation. To do this, we are thinking of sharing the 3-5 min resto with them and having them study and teach it to us in a follow up visit. Also we have thought of calling certain family members "on a mission." There is an awesome story that I read from an ensign article of how a small branch was built into a huge ward because they had "proselyting families." Certain families would go out and find other families to invite to activities and love them into the church. All of this is easier said than done, but we will give it a shot!
Thank you for all of the birthday wishes! I am so grateful for eternal families.
Sorry my email is kind of lame this week.
Elder Soutas
p.s. ill send the baptismal photos once i get them.
No comments:
Post a Comment